Eureka!
I feel like a classical music prospector who’s struck the motherlode of unusual and neglected repertoire!
The Bard Music Festival, held each summer at Bard College in sylvan upstate New York, is the crown jewel of Bard SummerScape, a broader celebration of the arts. The festival’s primary focus is on a specific composer and his or her world. So even if the star attraction is, say, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius, or Carlos Chávez, a significant amount of the programming is devoted to that composer’s contemporaries, influences, and successors.
No word yet on whether or not the Bard Music Festival will decide to move ahead with this summer’s projected celebration of Nadia Boulanger. But judging from the facts that just about every other music festival in North America has already cancelled, and that Bard College is located just two hours north of New York City, I’m not holding my breath (except around other people, especially at the grocery store).
In the meantime, Bard is finding ways to connect with audiences beyond its idyllic campus, and I am pumped to have tapped into this treasure trove of past Bard performances, especially of the operas (read on).
Traditionally, musicians of the American Symphony Orchestra have formed the core of the Bard Festival Orchestra (Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, serves as artistic director of both), though in recent years, a number of the concerts have also been performed by Bard’s resident orchestra, The Orchestra NOW.
Some of ASO’s contributions, Bard-related and otherwise, can now be streamed from the orchestra’s website:
In addition, every week, the Fisher Center at Bard is sharing a page of content based on the outstanding work the festival has done in reviving the neglected output of a number of deserving composers. This week, the focus is on Sergei Taneyev:
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/upstreaming/
Nadia Boulanger is the first woman to be selected as the focal point of Bard proper (though Grazyna Bacewicz was the subject of a satellite festival in San Francisco, Bard Music West, last year, and works by women composers – including Nadia’s sister, Lili – have been included as a matter of course in regular Bard programming). Boulanger’s influence, as one of the great pedagogues of the 20th century, was enormous. She was particularly influential in the artistic development of innumerable American composers. So when the festival does come to pass, the repertoire should be notably diverse and, as always, fascinating.
For more information, visit https://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/
